I've been clearing out part of the shed. One of the bays. I think of it as a future café, or perhaps even a place to sleep. I'll show ya. I'm taking certain old items—tire, rim, an old heavy plow, pure iron, the weight—and moving them into a different shed. A junk shed.
Now I'm taking my drill out there to reinforce the structure a bit. This is my playground, my school, my office, my church.
Awake again at an off hour, at
an odd hour, now for several days
on end. Times like 3:13, 3:23, 3:34.
Some combination of threes
after bad dreams.
I'm not going to journal the dreams,
it's stupid stuff, scare tactics
drummed up by me, designed
to rattle me the most. Strangers yelling
through the window. Me fleeing
to the attic above my attic.
My nerves seem to have risen
with the humidity, with the
overnight lows. They are rising
with the river itself.
When it gets like this, the
river cannot drain. It cannot
get downstream fast enough.
So it camps out in the yard or
suns itself in the kitchen sink.
To settle myself
I go to make a drink
but when I reach into the freezer
I find the river lurking there—
vital cubes
of dirty ice.
I think about our conversation. Our conversations. They're like a river. One river, different river, it doesn't matter. What we say—it's important to say it. I'd like to remember everything but once you say something it's in the river, the river takes it on down the stream, we can't look at the river to remember whether we said something. Did we say it, didn't we? If it's important enough we can say it again, and it can go into the river again, and it's not wasteful, it's not pollution if we mean what we say when we say it...
Nightmare ham, dateline America. Tonight's top story: the inimitable error: the journalists all died at the truth. I'm stuck reading about this left-behind sense of beds made poorly — pissed in then slept in then folded like cardboard. Next time will be a different screw-up. The great, big puke-off was only a rejection of any kind of appetizer fresh from the ocean & served with marinara.
Southeastern summer
Star chart took us miles away.
Unlit road brought us back
To sleep the sleep of myths.
In our dreams we spoke
to the after-image.
O, brightest star,
O, distant bug of lightning,
You’re a dying pinprick,
Poised to explode
First Then
And then Now.
You were in all of our dreams
That night.
You swallowed us
Like a drop of fuel
On your colorless voyage
To nowhere.
You became your own constellation.
The end of the light,
The beginning.
I rolled into the pocket of
that eight-ball-sided dream.
I bumped out with the poetry heebie-jeebies,
crapulous and reeking of split-end angst.
I could not sleep until I brushed the clues away;
it was only then I’d filled the crossword in:
as quiet as the heron fishing
reluctantly in a culvert along the bleeding interstate;
as solemn as the screeching hawk perched in a sunset tree
meditating keen on its blind, nocturnal dinner—
At home amongst the long-legged power towers,
changing colors like a leaf, not afraid to fall.
0As I try to feel tired,the bed speaks, wood on wood.Add that to the listof things to do on Monday.At least my pants still fit (barely).Some of those fat fattieshave really given up on life.Them and the suicides. 1Makeup and dancing.And audience participation.What’s that?! says the guy on stage.(He puts his hand to his ear.)I … Continue reading Sleep Constitutional
Sleep is part
of the underground—
not taxed. All
these hours, colors,
and people (real and not)
are coming to me for free,
cracking their belts
like whips,
offering me
chests of money.
What code—
what provision
of science—
does this fall under,
this unregulated
carnival of closed eyes?
Is it safe?
Are the funnel cakes
sold here
soaked in trans fats?
I fall asleep at night
on a welcome mat,
in front of the
brick-hard hearth. I
keep warm
by throwing one more
log, one more day
on the fire.
I walked from one end of
this city to the other and saw
sidewalk after sidewalk with
Maufrais etched into it.
Maufrais the maker of concrete,
Maufrais the master of sand
and aligning right corners.
Rick from Travis Heights,
Rick of Vietnam and Austin High,
Rick the one-man mowing company,
made of cords, engines, and gasoline.
I said, “Rick, do you know Maufrais?”
He offered me a cigarette but
my bus was on its way.
At home it is late and quiet.
I am not sleeping, just lying here.
I can hear the low rumble of trucks but it
doesn’t bother me, in want of sleep.
I awake the next morning
to the gleeful bleats
of a garage sale across the street.
Timid myself, I send Lenore over.
It’s just a bunch of junk, she says.
We decide to talk about baby names.
I offer one up and she shoots it down.
No, that name is ruined forever, she says.
In her lap is someone’s baby-book.
Mmm-hm-hm-hm! Look at them
in their dresses and their
cute little shoes.
I remember now that it poured
this morning at 4 a.m. but
I missed it, awake enough only
for an instant, only
enough to realize it was raining.
I offer up another one: Maufrais.
She does not reject it outright saying,
I have no doubts about it myself but
I wonder if the Italians would accept it.
All day I drank coffee,
eventually got so high my
hands were shaking and
I had to eat the leftover casserole.
Outside, Rick is lurking.
When he fires up the lawnmower
lines of poetry
gather on my skin,
like beads of sweat.
For more on Maufrais, try this.
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